Hello! It’s nice to see your faces! It’s been too long! We’re back, a little older, probably not much wiser, but definitely ready to assign positive and negative attributes to wrestling on television! First things first:

– It’s been a busy two weeks over at The Mandible Claw. Podcastravaganza is ready to take over your earholes and fill your brainstuffs with delight! Guests include Leva Bates, and Beyond Wrestling/WSU’s Drew Cordeiro. Brandon joined me to talk about the pitfalls of leisure time at Lucha Libre shows, teenage crushes, and the importance of Halloween costume accuracy. The week kicked off with Robert Newsome of the Atomic Elbow sharing more crazy Chikara theories as we descend deeper into the rabbit hole, and also potentially complete and utter madness.

– I dug into the mess of unopened discount wrestling DVDs that live on my shelf to review WWE’s One Night Stand: Extreme Rules 2007. It involves wrestling reenactments, du-rags, and shark attacks OUT OF NOWHERE. Vintage Mandible Claw!

– I’ll be at the (maybe) two ROH shows in Toronto (Border Wars and (probably) the TV taping), so if you see me, say hello! I’ll be the one in the ACH shirt looking slightly uncomfortable when ACH or Veda aren’t around. Or, if you see a lady and think “hey, that girl looks like she shrunk Brandon’s wardrobe but increased his visible distaste for Kevin Steen,” yes, that is me.

“1997 WCW got huge ratings, 48.3 minimum, brother. And have you been to the movies lately? Remakeamania is sweeping the nation, and whatchu gonna do, when after defeating Bully Ray for the TNA World Title and saving the company, the Hulkster releases No Holds Barred 2 in theaters nationwide, sweeps the Oscars, makes 11 billion dollars worldwide?”

“Mean Gene, I’ll tell you what the Hulkster’s gonna do after that. I’m gonna use these 24 inch pythons to lift the 950 pound corpse of Andre the Giant over my head, slap some strings on him, and throw down some basslines as the new bassist for Metallica. Hulkamania, forever, brother!”

do +1 things here ?! are there going to be top 10 comments in the future on IMPACT’s B&W ? is danielle gonna really understand that wrestling fans (other than chikara’s ones) are stupid and wouldn’t like or understand anything even a little bit complicated like she would like things to be, sadly ?!!

TNA does a fine job of insulting its fans’ intelligence already. Having Danielle do it too would be overkill.

Wrestling fans, as a whole, are no more stupid than any other group of people. Yet for some reason there’s this belief that they are, ESPECIALLY among the fans themselves. It creates this self-fulfilling cycle of lowered expectations wherein people accept shitty products because “it’s just wrestling,” and “wrestling fans are stupid.” So then we get more shitty products because people went along with it the first time and the cycle repeats. Companies won’t ever be forced to improve their product as long as customers lazily accept the slop they’re fed. (And the companies like it that way, because being good is much harder than lazily throwing out “Cena overcomes the odds again, lol” ad nauseum.)

And no, there are no top comments here. +1 is just shorthand for telling someone they made a good comment. Our jokez are untainted by the bright lights and tawdry thrills of brief internet fame. Plus Danielle is funnier than we are anyway.

Say what you want about that Knockouts match, the fact that it’s over 3 minutes long is longer than any Raw or Smackdown divas match in the past 6 months. But it still doesn’t hold a candle to the quality of wrestling and length of matches that the women of NXT are doing right now.

Watching someone struggle to tie their own shoes for ten minutes doesn’t make it any better than watching someone struggle with velcro straps for two. If it’s awkward and bad, why drag it out and make everyone look even worse?

but gail kim, mickie james and tara were handling it alright in the beginning, IMO !

not good (compared to the other ladies matches that we watch outside of raw, IMPACT or smackdown, if we still watch that last one ..) but just at least alright !

although I would want nothing more than TNA bringing back leva bates (that one time she appeared on IMPACT to through something in hogan’s and sting’s eyes before the A&8’s took them to the club house was just AWESOME !), ivilesse felez (because anyone from NXT not named bo dallas = GREAT) and bring in portugal’s perfect athlete SHANNA (she’s in gut check’s weird internet’s voting system and she passed the first round)

In defense of Matt Morgan and poor writing, I like to think that Morgan has seen the way Bully Ray “Bullied” his way into the Heavyweight Championship and thinks he can just do the same because he’s crazy in the head from concussions. logic and continuity!

A way more coherent broadcast than RAW has been lately say what your want about Aces and Eights but they do tie the show together. They’ve been a lot more entertaining without the masks and with Bully Ray bossing them around.

– d’lo, bischoff and briscoe get fired from the club for failing it a lot in the following few weeks .. it’s not official yet, but I like to believe that it is the way they’re going .. or so I wish

– D.O.C. and knux join the tag division along with the 3 bromigos, the returning generation me/young bucks AND joseph park teaming with rob terry because he wants his to help him get more in shape like bully ray did and unlike what samoe joe does and at the same time because rob terry is secretly a big fan of joseph’s brother chris, you know, abyss !

– devon vs magnus for the tv title –> magnus wins it –> they start using it for real as a midcard title and build fueds around it and never forget about it again

– bully ray vs mr.anderson for the world title after anderson reveals that he only agreed to enter the club per orders from the ever so genious and never wrong ever hulk hogan so that he can destroy it from the inside ! and that he was just fooling all of them all the time and got them to fire d’lo, bischoff and briscoe !!

P.S. and joseph park figures a plot hole in taz’s contract, gets him fired and they get us don west back in the announcing table !!!

I’m just saying this because I’m a weird …… WIEEEEEERD PERSON with a horrible fashion sense, but I really ……. REALLY LIKED~ chris sabin’s new haircut, cut from the side shorts AND angle’s singlet !!! even with his junk clearly noticable for you danielle (because you’re the only wrestling fan around here that concentrates at people’s junks, probably … or because I, as a straight dude, don’t do that) !!!

I also think that garret bischoff looks really cool nowadays with the new look !!!

I used to think that james storm is the best dresser in TNA when I first started to watch it, too … but now I opened my eyes .. and he’s the NOT the absoloute worst like you’ll say ! but pretty close

I tell you what I did like was the fact that As&8s came to ring side but refused to help him as if they were testing him. He did swear his colors that he would take Angle out. I wonder if this means he’s out of the club. Maybe now they’ll be called the “No D-Lo’s allowed” club. I hope he has to walk home naked dragging the “motorcycle of shame” behind him.

Danielle, I absolutely love your Best/Worsts. This column and Brandon’s Best/Worsts of Raw are probably singlehandedly responsible for getting me back into fake fighting. Major props.

That being said, I’m surprised how much of this column I disagree with. Actually it’s really only two things but two things that I vehemently disagree with…

Robbie E is just goood awful. In fact, all “broski” wrestlers are beyond terrible. Roid Terry beating up three guys that could just as easily be Jersey Shore casting call rejects is a special kind of horrible. Any redeeming words about the backstage segment or the match are…well…irredeemable…

On the other hand, the Knockouts match was probably the best match of the entire show. I realize that’s a pretty low bar on a show where Sting faced Matt Morgan for a title match, D-Lo was involved in an “I Quit” match, and Rob Terry destroyed three guys straight out of the “My New Haircut” YouTube video (seriously, how far are we from backstage segments involving all of them downing Jagerbombs and Heinekens and scrolling through the Knockouts website on a laptop while referring to all the ladies as “fuckin skanks”?), but still, I was into it. Of all the things to fast forward through on this show, you picked that? WORST. (that’s right…a taste of your own medicine…how you like THEM apples?!)

The good news is that page 4 redeems both of these missteps on its own with room to spare. A+ work.

Couldn’t agree more about the AJ Styles storyline. Did we really need Kurt Angle to be guy #23487 to ask AJ to be on his side? Will this EVER pay off? Will AJ ever actually talk when someone calls him out to the ring? At least this time he wore a shirt.

By the way, I could be wrong, but hasn’t Kurt Angle been wearing the same singlet for like…his entire career?

Speaking of which, slightly weirded out by how much time you spend looking at TNA wrestlers’ junk but, hey, someone’s gotta do it, I suppose. (That means boner!)

Also a couple things that went curiously without mention:
1. What the hell does James Storm have to do with the tag match?
2. Why the hell did the ref call the match after only checking Matt Morgan’s arm twice? Moreover, why did none of the announcers mention this? That kinda makes me think it was just a massive screw-up rather than something that may actually be part of the storyline. Then again, Matt Morgan getting a title shot is only slightly less horrible than Sting getting one. If wishing only made it so, they both would have been knocked out or counted out or disqualified or something…anything to make it so that neither of them won the match…

Sorry if this was overly critical but this week’s episode really bummed me out. I would seriously consider never watching TNA again if it wasn’t for Bad Influence v. Dirty Heelz next week (and also the fact that I’ve only been watching for like four weeks now).

Rest assured I still love you and look forward to the mere possibility of a Best/Worst of Impact every Friday. Keep it up! <3